World Affairs: The heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, together with his wife, Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, arrive in England for some “shopping and sightseeing” [The Spectator, 22nd November 1913]. Over the coming week, whenever they are seen in public, they will experience “the extreme friendliness which Englishmen invariably manifest towards all members of the Austrian House”.

Society and culture: Writing in Britain’s “Illustrated London News”, G.K.Chesterton laments the general level of ignorance of history being shown by the younger generation:

“It is quite natural that the prosperous people in our time should know no history. If they did know it, they would know the highly unedifying history of how they became prosperous. It is quite natural, I say, that they should not know history: but why do they think they do? Here is a sentence taken at random from a book written by one of the most cultivated of our younger critics, very well written and most reliable on its own subject, which is a modern one. The writer says: ‘There was little social or political advance in the Middle Ages’ until the Reformation and the Renaissance… [when in fact]...there is scarcely an important modern institution under which he lives, from the college that trained him to the Parliament that rules him, that did not make its main advance in that time”.